A Different Republican?

BOB HERBERT THE NEW YORK TIMES

July 2, 2000|BOB HERBERT THE NEW YORK TIMES

George W. Bush is telling all who will listen that he is a "different kind of Republican." He insists that while he remains a conservative, he nevertheless is willing to address the concerns of ethnic minorities and others who, to one degree or another, have perceived the Republican Party to be hostile to their interests.

To accept this claim of heightened consciousness and increased tolerance, one has to overlook certain things about Bush. On Monday, for example, he spoke at a dinner given by the eccentric Congress of Racial Equality, where he shared the dais with -- of all people -- Bob Grant, one of the vilest, most racially inflammatory personalities ever to be heard on New York radio.

For years, Grant, who is white, would get behind the microphone and spew the worst kinds of invective at black people. "I can't take these screaming savages," he would say, "whether they're in that African Methodist church, the AME church, or whether they're in the streets, burning, robbing, looting."

He would wonder aloud "if they've ever figured out how they multiply like that."

Grant toned down his act only after he was fired from WABC radio for disgusting comments he made about the death of Commerce Secretary Ron Brown in a plane crash in 1996.

To see Bush as a different kind of Republican, as a politician serious about reaching out to blacks and other minorities, one would have to overlook his decision to share the dais with such a man. Just as one would have to overlook the flap over Charles Williams, who was appointed by Governor Bush to lead a commission that oversees law enforcement training in Texas. The appointment came a year after Williams testified in a discrimination case that he did not consider certain grotesque, racially charged terms to be ethnic slurs. The terms included "porch monkey" and "black bastard."

"If it's in a general statement, no, I don't consider it a racial slur," said Williams, who is white and the police chief of Marshall, Texas. He also said that when he was growing up, black people didn't mind being called "nigger."

"Back then we had Nigger Charlie and Nigger Sam, Nigger Joe. And we regarded those people with all the respect in the world. That was their name They didn't mind. It wasn't any big deal then."

That, of course, would come as news to an awful lot of black Americans.

Bush said he had not been aware of Williams' comments when he appointed him chairman of the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education. The governor said: "I don't accept racism in any shape or form. At the very minimum, he ought to apologize."

The chief apologized and quietly stepped down as chairman, although he remains on the commission and is still the chief in Marshall.

And it was George W. Bush himself who in February made that now-notorious visit to Bob Jones University in South Carolina to tout what he called "our ideas, Republican ideas, conservative ideas."

There certainly is a need for a different kind of Republican. Sen. Robert Bennett, R-Utah, declared several months ago that Bush was virtually certain to be the Republican Party's presidential nominee, unless "some black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child that he fathered."

Swell.

Even retired Gen. Colin Powell, a Republican, said last Sunday that the GOP has not done a good job representing blacks.

At the moment, Bush's claim to being "different" seems weak. He's been hanging out in some low places with some low people. He says his heart is pure, but there's only so much you can overlook.

Write to columnist Bob Herbert at The New York Times, 229 W. 43rd St., New York, NY 10036.